Giants Software is back with the latest installment in its popular Farming Simulator series! Farming Simulator 2016 is now available for iOS and Android devices, and unlike the casual farming games you may be familiar with, this game is decidedly more in-depth, and more immersive as far as farm management games go. You can plant, grow, harvest, and sell a total of five different crops, raise livestock, and sell timber. You can also buy new fields so you can make your farm bigger. Then there’s also farm equipment (as represented by over 20 real-life brands) and AI-controlled farm hands you can enlist to help manage your farm.

As we said earlier, FS2016 (as well as its predecessors) is more in-depth than FarmVille or other similar games. But you shouldn’t feel too daunted if this is the first time you’re playing a game in the FS series. The following Farming Simulator 2016 tips, cheats and strategy guide should be a useful resource for you, not only when you’re starting out, but also as you progress further in the game.

1. Know The Control System

The first thing you should do in FS2016 is to get to know the game’s controls. Unfortunately, Giants didn’t include a tutorial mode for the game, and everything is out there for you to discover on your own. But we can help you with that by enumerating each of the icons, from bottom left to bottom right. These buttons are: steering slider, switch vehicles, detach tools, activate tools, hire assistant, honk horn, and throttle.

2. Get To Know Everything Else

Aside from your harvester, you also have one tractor to work with, and a couple items you can attach to it as you work on your farm. The flat green item is the cultivator, the sowing machine is the thing you see in red, and lastly, the green bin with wheels is the tipper. And now that you’re familiar with the items on your farm, the next thing you’ll want to do is to harvest your wheat (your introductory crop, as wheat often is in these games) while early. It’s also a good move to use your tractor to cultivate and prep your crops for sowing; to this end, you can hire an assistant to operate your harvester, so that you can focus on cultivating the field instead.

Additionally, when it comes to sowing, you should stick to wheat and canola unless you’ve attached a sowing machine to your tractor.

3. Find Ways To Make Money Early On

The money will roll in soon enough, but how can you make more of it while early, and what would be the best things to spend your money on? Talking about earning money, you can sell all the introductory wheat, canola, corn, sugar beet, and potato you get at the start of a game (you get 5,000 of each crop) for a tidy sum of money and more starting cash. Next, prioritize buying a second tractor as the first item to purchase with your money. It’s always good to have a second tractor that can cultivate, sow, and haul.

4. Hire Assistants

Farming Simulator 2016 allows you to hire AI-controlled assistants, and fortunately, their services come cheap. If you’ve got an assistant driving your vehicles, it will cost about $1 per second; that may sound like a lot of cash, but it’s worth it due to the time you can save. By hiring about two assistants, you can harvest, cultivate, and sow one field, with each of you (that’s you and your assistants) handling one of those specific tasks alone.

5. Assign Tasks To Your Assistants

We’ve covered the advantages of having assistants well enough, but there’s more that they can do aside from helping you work the fields. For example, you can ask an assistant to sell your grain, just as long as you tell them where to go; make sure to point them towards the location highlighted in blue, as you’ll earn the most there. You can have them refill fertilizer spreaders and sowing machines, and have your vehicles cleaned too. They’ll also be happy to refuel your vehicles and their attached tools automatically when they’re driving. Open the map and use the Functions icons to direct your assistants, regardless of the task you want them to help you with.

6. But What If You Don’t Want To Hire Assistants?

You will want to hire assistants at some point, but if you insist on saving money, you might want to try “cruise control.” Drive your vehicle’s throttle all the way and it will keep moving forward until you slow down. Just be sure you don’t crash your vehicle while doing this, as this is a good way to simplify the driving process when operating one of your farm vehicles.

7. Research Before You Sell

Don’t just head off to sell your grains without doing some basic research first. This would mean checking the current prices by selecting the Prices menu option. If you see that a certain crop isn’t selling for much, then don’t sell your supplies just yet; wait it out until the prices have gone up considerably.

8. Be Aware Of Your Harvester’s Capacity

A general rule of thumb in FS2016 is that your harvester will fill up faster if you’ve got a larger field. This would require you to have a tipper handy, and for you to unload that tipper. Stop on the right side and the harvester will unload automatically when it’s too full. And in relation to this, it’s never a good idea to bite off more than you can chew by having too many fields or too many crops growing at the same time.

9. Save Money For Advanced Equipments

We suggest saving money for a tedder and a baler; these will allow you to cut grass in fields where the grass is overgrown and create hay bales for your livestock. This would then allow your cows to produce milk and your sheep to produce wool; both items sell for a lot of money, so if you can afford a tedder and/or baler, go buy them.